he's leetle, but he's plum full of grit. He can beat any nigger I ever
seed at the plough. He'd outplough me if he war a head taller."

"That will mend," remarked the lawyer from the neighbouring county with
facetious intention. "A boy and a beanstalk will grow, you know. There's
no helping it."

"Oh, he'll be a man soon enough," added the judge, his gaze passing over
the large, red head to rest upon the small one, "and a farmer like his
father before him, I suppose."

He was turning away when the child's voice checked him, and he paused.

"I--I'd ruther be a judge," said the boy.

He was leaning against the faded bricks of the old court-house, one
sunburned hand playing nervously with the crumbling particles. His
honest little face was as red as his hair.

The judge started.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, and he looked at the child with his kindly eyes. The
boy was ugly, lean, and stunted in growth, browned by hot suns and
powdered by the dust of country roads, but his eyes caught the gaze of
the judge and held it.

Above his head, on the brick wall, a board was nailed, bearing in black
marking the name of the white-sand street which stretched like a
chalk-drawn line from the grass-grown battlefields to the pale old
buildings of King's College. The street had been called in honour of a